The United States’ cultural obsession with winning precludes an effective grand strategy. Since 1945, and increasingly since the end of the Cold War, American military and economic dominance has been so great this fixation was unimportant. However, with China’s rise, America no longer has this luxury and needs a bona fide grand strategy. Americans’ distaste for the sporting tie has fostered a national culture whose tendrils have infested foreign policy decision making. Absent a dominant global military position, the U.S. must learn to prioritize and take risk, important elements of strategy identified in Jacqueline Whitt’s recent article, “In Defense of a Strategy of Not-Losing.”[1] This article argues America’s fascination with winning, birthed through the character of national sports, constrains strategic options.[2] The 2018 National Defense Strategy’s advocacy for strategic predictability is oxymoronic: strategy must not be predictable. The United States must ignore its natural Jominian tendencies to attack enemy strength and instead consider an indirect approach, attacking enemy weakness.[3] In an age of emerging multi-polarity, America cannot countenance predictability and must adopt a more nuanced approach or fade as other hegemons have throughout time.

The Ignominious or Glorious Tie in Sports

The American fascination with winning is most apparent in sport. Ties are impossible in three of the four major American sports: basketball, ice hockey, and baseball. The introduction of overtime in 1974 reduced the probability of ties in American football. In 2018, following a tied game between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers, Steelers running back James Conner said, “Winning is what we do, and we didn’t do that. It kind of feels like a loss.”[4] Browns head coach Hue Jackson commented, “Obviously disappointed at the outcome, a tie game,” ignoring the moral importance Cleveland derived from breaking a 17-loss stretch in the National Football League and a six-game losing streak against Pittsburgh.[5] After the 2018 Vikings-Packers tie, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers described the tie as “Close to an L; doesn’t feel great,” despite Minnesota missing a 35-yard field goal attempt at the death to win.[6] As a foreigner in the United States, these attitudes seem odd, because the ignominy of the draw is an American cultural peculiarity.

Sports played outside the United States place higher value on the draw or tie. In test match cricket, teams can play for five days and draw. Moreover, heroic, backs-to-the-wall draws can be celebrated like victories. Such hard-earned results bring psychological advantage for the team previously anticipating defeat. During the first 2009 Ashes Test Match, England scraped a draw with Australia but scored a huge moral victory, going on to win the series 2-1. In soccer, the away team frequently plays for a draw, generating long-term value for the end-of-season league table. Away teams play deliberately defensive matches, as draws benefit them but tax the home team. Playing for a draw is a strategic consideration, not a tactical one. It is about winning the war, not the battle. The sport-to-war corollary is clear: the attacker must overcome its opponent to achieve its goals, whereas the defender merely has to survive.

Sporting attitudes reflect and reinforce a society’s culture; they provide foundational experiences for learning, yielding “an especially great impact on perceptual predispositions.”[7] U.S. leaders have often supported or played sports in high school and college, imbuing many with a distaste for the draw and a lust for victory. When addressing the American public, U.S. politicians couch references to wartime pursuits in the language of “overwhelming victory,” perhaps reflecting political cheap talk, or maybe an understanding of American sporting and national cultural proclivities that dictate victory as the only acceptable outcome.[8] The U.S. sporting preoccupation with winning works to the detriment of American foreign policy. Victories in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven as elusive as they are irrelevant; strategy is not about winning, but about continuing advantage.[9]

Victory or Advantage in Strategy

The notion of continuing advantage reflects the Clausewitzian assertion that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”[10] Politics does not end—unless you happen to be the Carthaginians—so victory can be a somewhat meaningless, and even detrimental, goal. America famously lost no battles during the Vietnam War, yet failed to achieve its political goals. Assuming the relationship between countries continues following the cessation of hostilities, a declaration of victory achieves little beyond performative bragging rights. It may instead foster resentment in the vanquished, as it did for Germany following World War I or complacency in the winner as for Israel following the Six Day War.

Continuing advantage is a vital strategic concept, perhaps best illustrated by Britain’s exploitation of Enigma intelligence. After breaking the codes in July 1941, the British only used Enigma-derived intelligence if independently verifiable through other sources, ensuring the Germans never knew of their edge. Protecting this strategic advantage necessitated heart-wrenching decisions about the lives of servicemen; but had they been saved, the Germans may have seen cause to change their codes. Strategy entails determining what is most important and focusing resources and action on that objective.[11] The British prioritized sustained access to the Enigma decodes, securing their continuing advantage.

The subtlety of the British approach contrasted sharply with the American quest for decisive victory. During the Combined Chiefs of Staff Conferences of World War II, George Marshall expressed his determination to retake France as soon as possible, ideally in 1942. The British chiefs preferred to attack German weak points in North Africa.[12] America is a confident young nation, but strategically naïve in believing decisive victory is always there for the taking. Yet, this attitude is born of a rich history of success.

America’s wartime history is replete with splendid victories over the British, Native Americans, Confederates, pirates, Mexico, China, Germany, and Japan. This tactical historical record fuels American expectations of strategic victory. The last 50 years, however, belie this expectation. Despite achieving victories in the Gulf War, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the U.S. suffered protracted defeats—more generously, stalemates—in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

In 1968, the North Vietnamese leader Le Duan devised a plan to assault multiple cities in the South, timed to exploit the absence of Southern Vietnamese troops during the Tet holiday and American political rhetoric during an election year.[13] Incumbent President Lyndon Johnson had just launched his success offensive, hoping to garner sufficient public support for the war by emphasizing U.S. gains in Vietnam. Militarily, Tet was an unmitigated disaster for North Vietnam; its forces were crushed. Yet, Le Duan’s offensive exposed Johnson’s distortion of U.S. progress in Vietnam, undercutting public support for the war and scoring a tremendous political victory for the North Vietnamese. Had the United States not succumbed to its own victory-minded rhetoric, Tet could have been a success for the United States. Having preached victory too soon, the U.S. was unable to exploit a series of victories during Tet to its advantage.

Some 35 years later, the United States declared victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, lending credence to the adage that “the only thing we learn from history is we learn nothing from history.”[14] Even in the unipolar moment, the U.S. was unable to transform apparent military victory into continuing political advantage, the sole purpose of war.[15] Now the unipolar moment has passed, replaced by emerging multipolarity and significant challenges to American hegemony. Do such challenges harbor a new, more nuanced, and strategic approach by the United States?

An Overly Ambitious National Defense Strategy

The unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy illustrates America’s persistent appetite for global victory, which is both unachievable and nonstrategic given the current balance of power. While the National Defense Strategy acknowledges America’s “competitive military advantage has been eroding,” its proposals are not reflective of this emerging reality.[16] Strategically, it calls for “maintaining favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle-East, and the Western Hemisphere.”[17] Operationally, the National Defense Strategy emphasizes “sustain[ed] Joint Force military advantages, both globally and in key regions.”[18] The National Defense Strategy goes on to describe a global operating model founded on nuclear, space, cyber, reconnaissance, command and control, and strategic mobility capabilities.[19] Insisting on the capacity to fight and win—globally, in all domains, at multiple levels of war—reveals a resistance to prioritizing goals, a vital strategic task. Intransigence to prioritization is further highlighted by Air Force leaders’ claims that the U.S. Air Force is busier than ever.[20] The obvious question, with America unencumbered by hot war, is why? Intolerance of all risk, paradoxically, creates risk everywhere. The approach stems from a culture that misunderstands the value of avoiding defeat.

Broadening Strategic Options for the United States

Policy options are severely constrained when winning is the only acceptable solution. Everett Dolman’s Pure Strategy and Eric Beinhocker’s The Origin of Wealth both suggest strategy should increase available options. Beinhocker calls for “making the tree of possibilities as bushy as possible at any point in time.”[21] The pursuit of maximal advantage, though, inhibits strategic possibilities, inevitably resulting in predictability. This tendency problematizes the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which extols the virtues of being “strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable.”[22] Being predictable is not strategic. Rather, it reflects long-standing U.S. predilections for attacking enemy strength, when attacking enemy weakness would be optimal. America’s historic strength leaves it predisposed to identify, attack, and destroy the enemy’s might. Nothing could be more demoralizing for an opponent than such overwhelming military power. However, the U.S. may need to employ a more calculated indirect approach in the future.[23]

America’s dogmatic fixation with winning leaves it prone to strategic manipulation. The United States has global interests, but cannot and must not try to win everywhere. Considering options beyond decisive victory in certain regions and domains would afford America additional strategic options. Maintaining the status quo, or even allowing some degree of expansion by other powers, might become acceptable, loosening the suffocating noose of victory from around the necks of policy makers and the U.S. military. America would cease to continually react—the prevailing condition for the U.S. military—but could instead choose to simply wait, and consider its options. Instead of calculating and exerting maximum effort ubiquitously, strategists could regionally prioritize America’s foreign policy. Strategists could ask broader questions. Active prioritization would mean applying minimum effort to avoid defeat in less critical areas, increasing flexibility, and building additional capacity where it really matters.

Conclusion

The United States must embrace strategy instead of focusing on an elusive and impossible global victory. While this shift will likely be uncomfortable, it is necessary. America must become both more strategically and operationally unpredictable. A flexible, strategic approach will allow the United States, at last, to reconstitute its overextended and overworked military forces. Retrenchment will save money, incentivize allies to take more responsibility, and reinvigorate the morale and capabilities of exhausted forces.

Great Britain fought and won two global conflicts during the twentieth century; winning those wars cost Britain its empire. Germany, who lost both conflicts, was quickly the most powerful nation in Europe. Winning is overrated. The United States does not need to always win. There is no direct path from winning to the achievement of political goals. While a more nuanced strategy will involve short-term risk, without it, long-term American hegemony is doomed.

Rich Milburn is a Royal Air Force officer and an instructor at the United States Air Command and Staff College. He is a graduate of both Air Command and Staff College and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Command and Staff College, Air University, the Royal Air Force, the Ministry of Defence, or the Government of Great Britain.

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Header Image: Army coach Jeff Monken takes the field with the Black Knights team before a game against Air Force on 3 Nov 18 (West Point/Army Times)

Notes:

[1] Whitt, Jacqueline E. “In Defense of a Strategy of Not-Losing.” The Strategy Bridge, July 23, 2020. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/7/23/in-defense-of-a-strategy-of-not-losing accessed on 24 Jul 2020; see also Posen, Barry. Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. 2014, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs.

[2] This is a stated aim of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, but not recommended by this author.

[3] Liddell Hart, Basil Henry. Strategy: The Indirect Approach. First Indian ed. 2012.

[4] The Sports Exchange, “Cleveland Browns Don’t Win, Settle for Tie with Steelers”, UPI, 9 Sep 2018,  https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/NFL/2018/09/09/Cleveland-Browns-dont-win-settle-for-tie-with-Pittsburgh-Steelers/4301536538548/

[5] Ibid.

[6] Dougherty, Pete. “Dougherty: Many to Blame as Packers Blow Big Chance to Get Leg up on Rivals.” Packersnews.com, September 16, 2018. https://www.packersnews.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/dougherty/2018/09/16/packers-blow-chance-gain-advantage-rival-vikings-tie/1307424002/ accessed on 10 Aug 2020.

[7] Jervis, Robert. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. New ed. 2017, 249.

[8] See, for example, George H.W. Bush’s 1999 speech at the Citadel, which borrows phrasing from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, http://www3.citadel.edu/pao/addresses/pres_bush.html,

[9] Dolman, Everett. Pure Strategy: Power and Principle in the Space and Information Age, 2005, 6.

[10] Von Clausewitz, Carl, Howard, Michael Eliot and Paret, Peter. On War, 2008, 87.

[11] Rumelt, Richard P., and Runnette, Sean, Narrator. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. 2012, 90.

[12] Pogue, Forrest C, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope 1939-1942, New York: Viking Press, 1963, 328-329.

[13] Asselin, Pierre. Vietnam's American War: A History. Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations, 2018, 153.

[14] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1832.

[15] Krauthammer, Charles. "The Unipolar Moment." Foreign Affairs 70.1 (1991): 23-34. Web.

[16] Mattis, James. Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf, 1, accessed on 10 Aug 2020.

[17] Ibid., 4.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid., 7.

[20] Jackson, George. “Air Force Leaders: We’re Smaller, Older and Busier than Ever.” Government Matters, May 29, 2019. https://govmatters.tv/air-force-leaders-were-smaller-older-and-busier-than-ever accessed 10 Aug 2020.

[21] Beinhocker, Origin of Wealth, 339.

[22] NDS Summary 2018, 5.

[23] Liddell Hart, Strategy.